Tracking expiring volunteer documents

Requirements expire. A background check goes stale, a waiver is only good for a year, a food handler card runs out. Until now you could see that on a volunteer's own record, one person at a time, which is fine for answering "is Dana current?" and no help at all for answering "who lapses this month?"

Expirations answers the second question. It is one list of every requirement across every volunteer, filtered by what has run out and what is about to, and you can select rows and ask those volunteers to renew without leaving the page.

You will find it under Volunteer Management, in the Review group of the left menu. The tab carries a count of everything needing attention, so you can tell at a glance whether anything is waiting.

Setting a requirement up to expire

Expiration is a property of the requirement, not of the volunteer, so it is set once in your Requirements Library and applies to everyone who holds it. Open a requirement and you will find three fields that govern its lifecycle.

FIELD	WHAT IT CONTROLS	LEFT BLANK
Validity (days)	How long a completed record stays good. A record completed today with 365 here expires a year from today.	The requirement never expires. Complete it once and it is done.
Start chasing (days before)	How far ahead of expiry reminders begin and the requirement starts appearing under Needs attention.	30 days.
Grace period (days)	How long past expiry a volunteer can still be scheduled while they sort out a renewal.	No grace. They are blocked from signing up the day it lapses.

Set Start chasing to match how long the thing actually takes to obtain. A screening that takes three weeks to come back deserves 60 or 90 days of warning. A parking permit does not need a month.

Changing Validity does not move the expiry dates on records volunteers already hold. It applies from the next time somebody completes or renews that requirement. If you shorten a waiver from a year to six months, existing records keep the date they were given.

Reading the list

The buttons across the top of the Expirations tab are the main control. Each one is a different question about your volunteers.

FILTER	SHOWS YOU
Needs attention	Anything lapsed, inside its own warning window, or rejected. The default, and usually the only one you need.
Expired	Past its expiry date, whether or not grace is still running.
In grace	Lapsed, but still inside the grace window, so those volunteers can still be scheduled today.
Next 30 days, 60, 90	Still valid, expiring within that many days. Useful for planning ahead of a season or a big event.
Never completed	Assigned or requested, never done. Different work from a renewal, so it is kept separate.
Current	Valid, with an expiry date that is not close.
All	Everything, including requirements that never expire.

Each row shows the volunteer and their email, the requirement and its type, the status, when it was completed, when it expires, and when you last asked them about it. The Expires column also says how long that is in plain terms, so "Mar 4, 2027" reads alongside "in 12 days" or "45 days ago".

Last asked is the column people find most useful once they start working the list. It says "Never" until somebody sends a request, so you can tell the volunteers you have chased twice from the ones nobody has contacted at all.

Narrowing it further

Underneath the filter buttons you can search by volunteer name or email, and limit the list to a single requirement, a single type, or the volunteers signed up for one page. Two checkboxes are worth knowing about:

Active volunteers only hides people who hold requirement records but have never signed up for anything. If your account has been running for years, this is most of what is in the expired list, and turning it on usually cuts the list to something workable.
Not asked in the last 14 days hides anyone already contacted recently, so you can work through the list over several sittings without sending the same person the same email twice.

Sorting by Least recently asked puts the people nobody has contacted at the top, which is a good way to work through a backlog.

Asking volunteers to renew

Tick the rows you want and click Request renewal. You get a preview before anything is sent, showing how many volunteers it will reach, how many requirements that covers, and who is being left out and why.

Each volunteer gets one email listing everything they personally owe, with a link to their supporter portal. One conversation per person, not one per document.

Volunteers are skipped, and named in the preview, when:

There is no email address on their contact record.
Nothing they hold can be completed by them. A requirement an organizer records by hand has nothing for the volunteer to do, so sending them a link would waste their time.
Nothing is currently owed. If you select rows from the Current or All filters, valid records are quietly dropped rather than asking somebody to renew paperwork they already hold.
They were already asked inside the cooldown, when you have the 14 day checkbox on.

The default message names the documents each volunteer owes, and their expiry dates where they have them. You can replace the subject and message with your own by ticking Write my own subject and message, but bear in mind the same words then go to everybody, so keep a custom message general.

To chase one person rather than a batch, use the menu at the end of their row. The same menu opens their contact record, the signed document, or the file they uploaded.

What the volunteer sees

The email links to the volunteer's supporter portal, where they sign in with their email address and a code. No password. Their My requirements card lists what they owe with a button beside each one, and the button depends on the type of requirement:

Review and renew for waivers, trainings, orientations and attestations. They read the document and sign it again.
Upload a new one for document uploads, such as a certification or a clearance letter.
Reapply for application requirements, which opens your vetting form.

If the requirement is set to need review, their renewal lands in your Requirements approvals queue rather than completing straight away, exactly as a first submission does.

Renewing early does not cost them time

When a volunteer renews before their current record has lapsed, the new expiry runs from the old expiry date, not from the day they signed. Somebody who renews an annual waiver a month early keeps that month.

This matters more than it sounds. If renewing early reset the clock, the rational thing for a volunteer to do would be to wait until the last possible day, which is the opposite of what the reminders are for.

Automating the chase

Working the list by hand is the right tool when you are cleaning up a backlog. For the steady state, build a workflow and let it run.

Under Automations, the trigger is Document signature: Status changed. Choose the state Expiring soon, and optionally a specific lead time from Days before expiry. Leave the lead time empty to catch every reminder point, including the early notice a requirement asks for through its own Start chasing setting.

Pair it with the Request Requirement Renewal action. This reopens the requirement and emails the volunteer a link, which is the part that matters: an email alone tells somebody their waiver is lapsing, and this makes sure there is something for them to do when they follow the link.

Every field on the action is optional. Left alone, it renews whichever requirement the trigger was about and writes the email itself. Worth setting:

Skip if already asked in the last (days) stops a volunteer who has been reminded once from hearing about it again at every later reminder point.
Requirements limits the action to specific items, for a workflow running off some other trigger that should sweep up whatever a volunteer owes.

The trigger fires on Expired too, which is worth a separate workflow if you want your coordinators notified when something actually lapses.

Getting the list by email

Under Reports, Volunteer Requirement Expirations is the same information as a spreadsheet: every volunteer and requirement that has run out or is about to, with the dates, whether grace is still running, and when they were last asked.

It can be put on a schedule, which is the point. Send it to your volunteer coordinators every Monday and expirations stop depending on somebody remembering to open a tab.

The Export button on the Expirations tab downloads what is currently on screen, which is the quicker option when you just want the rows in front of you.

What the statuses mean

STATUS	MEANING
Pending	Assigned or requested, not yet done. Shown as Awaiting approval when the volunteer has submitted it and an organizer still has to review it.
Completed	Done and valid. Carries an Expiring soon note once it enters its warning window.
In grace	Past its expiry date but inside the grace window. The volunteer can still be scheduled, and the row tells you the last date that holds.
Expired	Past its expiry date with no grace left. The volunteer is blocked from signing up for anything that requires it.
Rejected	Submitted and turned down. Treated as outstanding, so the volunteer can be asked to do it again.
Waived	Excused for this volunteer. Waived records never expire and are never included in a renewal request, which is the point of waiving one.

Expiry is worked out overnight, so a requirement that lapses at midnight is stamped Expired in the early hours. The list and the sign-up gate both treat a record as lapsed the moment its date passes, so nothing depends on waiting for that to run.

A few things worth knowing

Renewing keeps the history. Signing again inserts a new record rather than overwriting the old one, so you keep an audit trail of every year a volunteer held a waiver. The Expirations list shows only the current record for each volunteer and requirement, so the history does not clutter it.
Background checks still have their own tab. They appear in Expirations like any other type, but ordering a new screening through Sterling and managing that connection stays under Background Checks.
Requirements an organizer records by hand cannot be requested. Their checkbox is disabled, with a note explaining why. Trainings and orientations you run in person are usually in this group. Record those yourself, or use Bulk Import Status to do a roomful at once.